The UTD Mercury

Media Credit: Calvin Jamison The Dallas International School traded land with UTD to obtain the site for a new DIS campus. [Click to enlarge]

High schoolers will call the UTD campus their own on August 25, as Dallas International School (DIS) students begin their academic year in the Classroom Building (CB).

DIS administrators will move ninth through 12th grades from their campus on Churchill Way in Dallas into CB this fall to ease overcrowding. DIS will lease CB for two years and will construct a permanent facility on 13.8 acres at a time not yet established traded to the school by UTD, according to Executive Vice President and Provost Hobson Wildenthal.

In return, UTD received a 20.6 acre parcel of land to the north of the UTD campus across the railroad tracks, said Calvin Jamison, vice president for business affairs. The trade was finalized in early June.

Last fall, the UT System Board of Regents approved President David Daniel's proposal to lease the land to DIS, but Wildenthal said the private school's administration was concerned about raising funds or securing loans to build a campus on leased land.

The DIS is part of the Mission La'que Française School, which has 70 member schools around the world, and is one of 40 schools belonging to the Association of French Schools in America. DIS students study in French and English and may also study Spanish and Chinese, coupled with cultural education designed to promote proficiency in these languages, according to www.distexas.org.

Wildenthal called the partnership a "multi-dimensional win-win" scenario, with advantages ranging from the strategic value of the land parcel to mutual recruitment opportunities.

"You can't put a monetary value on (the land). There's a lot of discussion in the media about expanding the DART network on that railroad all the way to DFW (Airport)," he said. "The hope is that would be a logical place for our station. The general tendency is that the land around a DART station becomes more valuable."

Wildenthal said UTD administrators would like to construct a more direct entrance to campus from the north that could now go through the land traded to UTD.

The intangible benefits of the partnership include a shared dedication to the intellectual advantages of internationalism and an edge on recruiting "well qualified, multilingual" American and international students from DIS and its sister schools throughout the world, he said.

"I also think DIS sees a prestige element in being close to and affiliated with us in terms of recruiting students," Wildenthal said. "They're as interested in building enrollment as we are."

The DIS enrolls students as young as 3 years old for preschool classes, Wildenthal said, meaning faculty and staff would have access to an advantage UTD can't provide - excellent child care and private education.

Education students may also benefit from the proximity of pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school adjacent to campus.

"We're thinking about the benefits of doing some of our practice teaching for our teacher development program there so our students wouldn't have to travel to Mesquite or Irving," Wildenthal said.

The details are a bit more complicated, he said, as "the ever-expanding amount of bureaucracy begins to make people nervous." DIS high school students will attend their physical education classes in the Activity Center, have limited library privileges, may be using science labs and could be taking meals in the new Food Services building when it is completed.

Part of the lease agreement includes identification cards for the students and access to DART passes. Wildenthal said the administration considered enrolling all the students, but their status as minors - and some of them international students -- brought additional complications. He said the students will likely be given an affiliate status with details to be determined.

About 50 students and a dozen teachers will enter campus from the north to be dropped off or park, adding traffic during mornings and afternoons. Wildenthal said the change will be "noticeable to anyone who's here at 8:30 a.m.," but is unlikely to make a dent in parking on that side of campus.

DIS and UTD administrators are concerned about "minors running around campus," Wildenthal said, but students will usually be in a controlled environment with a teacher.

"We don't have a gated community and check everyone's ID. Who knows how many 13- and 14-year-olds are cruising around campus," Wildenthal said. "I'm trying to tell people, 'Relax. It's not that different.'"

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